Greece blocked from online transactions

Published: July 4, 2015 7:22 PM /

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greece

Citizens of Greece are unable to purchase anything from iTunes and the App Store, or make transactions via Paypal. This has come after the Greek government has imposed capital controls, restrictions on capital leaving the country.  One would think this would only be the case with capital in large quantities, but as many Greeks have unfortunately come to find out, it is any amount of money, even a mere ninety-nice cents for an mp3.  Buzzfeed also reports that one Greek citizen they spoke with lost a subscription to Foreign Policy magazine, while the same person’s daughter lost access to education.com.  Staff at Bloomberg news found that payment towards cloud services had been declined, and as a result had their digital storage downgraded.

So far, only Paypal has released a statement regarding what has happened.  This may be because Paypal is often used as a legitimate means of online financial transaction, while purchases via the App Store or iTunes are often frivolous.  Paypal’s statement does little more than state what is already known;

Due to the recent decisions of the Greek authorities on capital controls, funding of PayPal wallet from Greek bank accounts, as well as cross-border transactions, funded by any cards or bank accounts are currently not available. We aim to continue serving our valued customers in Greece in full, as we have for over a decade
Advocates of BitCoin are quick to point out that the cryptocurrency can still be moved out of Greece.

Greece currently finds itself in an economic Gordian Knot that seemingly has no undoing.  The current government is handling the problems between Greece and the Euro as well as Greece and the IMF as they see most prudent.  However, their action are having consequences, and if things continue as they are Greece may find itself isolated not just from the rest of Europe, but in a respect from the rest of the digital world.

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